Spencer Tracy gave his greatest ever performance in this tense movie which builds beautifully to the point where the violence hits home hard. Tracy is perfect as the stranger treated so badly by the inhabitants of a town with something nasty to hide. The villains include Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine, aid comes from Walter Brennan.
 

"The movie takes place within twenty four hours. It has a dramatic unity, an economy of word and action, that is admirable in an age of flabby Hollywood epics which meander on forever". William K Zinsser, New York Herald Tribune